Since the movie came out, I've found myself having to explain why Watchmen is important and interesting. Despite being the most revered comic book ofSince the movie came out, I've found myself having to explain why Watchmen is important and interesting. Despite being the most revered comic book of all time, it never really entered the mainstream until the film. Now, people are rushing to read it in droves, but approaching Watchmen without an understanding of its history and influences means missing most of what makes it truly special.

The entire work is an exploration of the history and purpose of the superhero genre: how readers connect to it, and what it means philosophically. Moore stretches from fond satire to outright subversion to minute allusion, encasing the once-simple genre in layers of meaning. Even as he refines and compresses the genre, he also constantly pushes its boundaries. Watchmen is unapologetic, unflinching, and most miraculous of all, freed from the shame which binds so many comics.

Moore never stoops to making an entirely sympathetic character. There is no real hero, and none of the characters represents Moore's own opinions. Superhero comics are almost always built around wholly sympathetic, admirable characters. They represent what people wish they were, and they do the things normal people wish they could do.

It is immediately gratifying escapism, which many people attach themselves to, especially the meek who lead tedious, unfulfilled lives. Many people also do the same thing with celebrities, idolizing them and patterning their own lives on the choices those famous people make. But in this modern age of reality TV and gossip media, we know that celebrities are not ideal people.

Indeed, their wealth and prominence often drives them mad. While everyone else views the world from the bottom up, they view it from the top down, and this skewed perspective wreaks havoc with their morality and sense of self. Moore's superheroes represent something even beyond this celebrity. Not only are they on the top of the heap, but they are physically different from other human beings. Their superiority is not just in their heads and pocketbooks, but in their genetics.

They are not meant to be sympathetic, they are meant to be human. They are as flawed and conflicted as any of us, and while we may sometimes agree with them, as often, we find them distant and unstable.

Many people have fingered Rorschach as the 'hero' of this tale, but that is as flawed as pinning Satan as the hero of 'Paradise Lost'. Following the classic fantasy of power, Rorschach inflicts his morality on the world around him. But, since he is not an ideal, but a flawed human, we recognize that his one-man fascist revolution is unjustified.

We all feel that we see the world clearly, and everyone around us is somehow confused and mistaken. Often, we cannot understand how others can possibly think they way they do. Sometimes, we try to communicate, but there is often an impassable barrier between two minds: no matter how much we talk or how pure our intentions, one will never be able to convince the other.

We all feel the temptation to act out--if only those disagreeable people were gone, the world would be a better place. While this justification may be enough for most comic writers, Moore realizes that the other guy thinks everything would be better if we were gone. Rorschach lashes out because his ideas are too 'out there' and he is too socially insecure to convince anyone that he is right. He is unwilling to question himself, and so becomes a force of his own violent affirmation.

Most who sympathize with him are like him: short-sighted and desperate, unable to communicate with or understand their fellow man. Many are unwilling even to try. Rorschach becomes a satire of the super hero code, which says that as long as you call someone evil, you are justified in beating him to death. This same code is also commonly adopted as foreign policy by leaders in war, which Moore constantly reminds us of with references to real world politics.

The rest of the characters take on other aspects of violent morality, with varying levels of self-righteousness. Like the British government of the 1980's, which inspired Moore, or the American government of the beginning of this century, we can see that equating physical power with moral power is both flawed and dangerous. Subjugating others 'for their own good' is only a justification for leaders who feel entitled to take what they can by force.

The only character with the power to really change the world doesn't do so. His point of view is so drastically different from the common man that he sees that resolving such petty squabbles by force won't actually solve anything. It won't put people on the same page, and will only create more conflict and inequality. Dr. Manhattan sees man only as a tiny, nearly insignificant part of the vast complexity of the cosmos. Though he retains some of his humanity, his perspective is so remote that he sees little justification for interference, any more than you or I would crush the ants of one colony to promote the other.

The ending presents another example of one man trying to enforce his moral solutions upon the entire world. Not only does this subvert the role of the super hero throughout comic book history, but reflects upon the political themes touched on throughout the book. Man is already under the subjugation of men--they may not be superhuman, but still hold the lives of countless billions in their hands. It is no coincidence that Moore shows us president Nixon, a compulsive liar and paranoid delusional who ran the most powerful country in the world as he saw fit.

Moore's strength as a writer--even more than creating flawed, human characters--is telling many different stories, which are really the same story told in different ways, all layered over each other. Each story then comments on the others, presenting many views. His plots are deceptively complex, but since they all share themes, they flow one into the next with an effortlessness that marks Moore as a truly sophisticated writer.

Many readers probably read right across the top of this story, flowing smoothly from one moment to the next, and never even recognizing the bustling philosophical exploration that moves the whole thing along. The story-within-a-story 'The Black Freighter' winds itself through the whole of Watchmen, and for Moore, serves several purposes. Firstly, it is another subversion of comic book tropes: Moore is tapping into the history of the genre, when books about pirates, cowboys, spacemen, monsters, and teen love filled the racks next to the superhuman heroes before that variety was obliterated by the Comics Code (yet another authoritarian act of destruction by people who thought they were morally superior).

But in the world of Watchmen, there are real superheroes, and they are difficult, flawed, politically motivated, and petty. So, superhero comics are unpopular in the Watchmen world, because there, superheroes are fraught with political and moral complexity. These are not the requisite parts of an escapist romp. We don't have comic books about our politicians, after all. We may have political satire, but that's hardly escapist fun.

So, instead they read about pirates. Beyond referencing the history of comics, 'The Black Freighter' works intertextually with Watchmen. The themes and events of one follow the other, and the transitions between them create a continuous exploration of ideas. Moore never breaks off his story, because even superficially unrelated scenes flow from one to the other, in a continuous, multilayered, self-referential narrative.

I continually stand in awe of Moore's ability to connect such disparate threads. Many comic authors since have tried to do the same, but from Morrison to Ellis to Ennis, they have shown that striking that right balance is one of the hardest things an author can do. Most of Moore's followers end up with an unpalatable mish-mash instead of a carefully prepared and seasoned dish.

Unlike most comic authors, Moore scripted the entire layout for the artist: every panel, background object, and action. Using this absolute control, Moore stretched the comic book medium for all it was worth, filling every panel with references, allusions, and details which pointed to the fullness and complexity of his world. Moore even creates meaning with structure, so that the size, shape, and configuration of panels tell much of the story for him.

One of the volumes is even mirrored, so that the first page is almost identical to the last, the second page to the second last, and so on. That most readers don't even notice this is even more remarkable. That means that Moore used an extremely stylized technique so well that it didn't interfere with the story at all.

But therein lies the difficulty: if a reader isn't looking for it, they will probably have no idea what makes this books so original and so remarkable. This especially true if they don't know the tropes Moore is subverting, or the allusive history he calls upon to contextualize his ideas.

While many readers enjoy the book purely on its artistic merit, the strength of the writing, and the well-paced plot, others disregard the work when they are unable to recognize what makes it revolutionary. One might as well try to read Paradise Lost with no knowledge of the Bible, or watch Looney Toons without a familiarity with 1940's pop culture.

It is not a perfect work, but there is no such thing. Moore's lead heroine is unremarkable, which Moore himself has lamented. He did not feel entirely comfortable writing women at that point in his career, and the character was forced on him by the higher ups. Luckily, she's not bad enough to ruin the work, and only stands out because she lacks the depth of his other characters.

His politics sometimes run to the anarchic, but often this is just a satire of violence and hubris. Moore gives no easy answers in his grand reimagining. His interlocking stories present many thoughts, and many points of view. In the end, it is up to the reader to decide for himself who was right or wrong--as if anyone truly could be.

Moore never insults the intelligence of his readers, and so creates a work with more depth than anyone is likely to plumb even after numerous readings. Likewise, he does not want you to 'hold on for the ride', but expects that you will engage and question and try to come to terms with his work, yourself. No one is necessarily the hero or villain, and many people find themselves cowed and unsure of such an ambiguous world, just as we do with the real world.

Watchmen is not instructional, nor is it simply a romp. This book, like all great books, is a journey that you and the author share. The work is meant to connect us to the real world, and not to let us escape from it. This is Moore's greatest subversion of the superhero genre, and does even more than Milton to "justify the ways of God to man", for many men delude themselves to godhood, yet even these gods cannot escape their fundamental humanity.

A lozenge is a shape. Like a cube, or a triangle, or a sphere. I know that every time he types it, you are going to imagine a cough drop flying sereneA lozenge is a shape. Like a cube, or a triangle, or a sphere. I know that every time he types it, you are going to imagine a cough drop flying serenely by, but it's a shape. It's from heraldry for god's sake. You may want to look up some synonyms to insert for yourself when he uses it, here are a few: diamond, rhombus, mascle.

Now that the greatest obstacle in Gibson's vocabulary has been dealt with, I can tell you that he writes in one of the finest voices of any Science Fiction author. His ability to describe things in succinct, exciting, sexy ways is almost certainly the reason we owe him for words like 'cyberspace'.

It took twenty years for his visions of leather-clad kung-fu ladies and brain-computer interfaces to reach the mainstream in The Matrix, but only because he was that far ahead of his time.

However, Gibson was no early adopter. He used a typewriter to write a book that predicted the internet, virtual reality, hacking, and all the nonsense we're embroiled in now (and some stuff we're still waiting for). It can sometimes feel unoriginal, but, much like Shakespeare, that's because what we have today is based on what he was doing then.

Though Gibson may not be as radical as Dick, or as original as Bradbury, there is something in his words, his stories, and his 'coolness factor' that keep bringing me back. Indeed, he is much more accessible than the philosophically remote Dick, Bradbury, or Ellison, and all in a slick package.

Just don't try to watch Johnny Mnemonic. Ever. He did write the best X-Files episode, though: 'Kill Switch'. He also wrote a script for Alien 3, which I have never read, but can state with certainty was better than the one they chose to film....more

Crazy, strange, exciting, visionary, action-packed, sexy. Reading this book is like watching the Matrix for the first time. Though it may lack pretensCrazy, strange, exciting, visionary, action-packed, sexy. Reading this book is like watching the Matrix for the first time. Though it may lack pretense of more complex literature, it asks vague and interesting enough questions to match The Bard's sophistry.

Beyond that it is just a great read. It shows a vision of the future that seems eminently likely, but unlike 1984 or Brave New World, has not started to feel stilted. It also lack the long-winded philosophical diatribes and allegories that stagnate that breed of classics. Gibson may have invented Cyberpunk, but Stephenson takes the genre out for a joyride and loses a hubcap on a bootstrap turn.

It was originally planned as a graphic novel, but when that got scrapped, Stephenson filled it out and got it published. Perhaps this is why his other works never match Snowcrash's frenetic teenage energy and sensuality. I wish there were more books this interesting and enjoyable....more

Neal Stephenson likes to throw weird shit together and see if it sticks. The more recent his book, the more likely it is to resemble a schizophrenic'sNeal Stephenson likes to throw weird shit together and see if it sticks. The more recent his book, the more likely it is to resemble a schizophrenic's curio cabinet. Your average Phillip Pullman will add a little wacky trepanning to his fantasy trilogy for that refined edge of esoteria.

Meanwhile, Stephenson will have an exiled member of Italian royalty who works in 'demolition real estate' and knows Escrima thanks to an intense trepanning session with Horace Walpole, Duke Orford. Which I believe is an accurate summary of the next William Gibson book.

One man's premise is another man's plot.

I liked it better when Stephenson used the bizarre as a spice to flavor a driven, exciting story. Though spices may make a dish delectable, they aren't palatable on their own; you need some meat. I guess what I'm saying is: who the fuck wrote Snowcrash and when will he write something else?...more

This book is about as 'sci fi' as an episode of CSI. Moon basically takes 'Flowers for Algernon' and hacks off the ending. The writing was alright, anThis book is about as 'sci fi' as an episode of CSI. Moon basically takes 'Flowers for Algernon' and hacks off the ending. The writing was alright, and there was some interesting characterization, but I suspect it only got the Nebula and Clarke because award committees love nothing as much as political correctness. This book is the equivalent of an actor making an Oscar bid by playing a mentally-challenged character.

I know Moon is a sci fi author, but in this book, it feels like she just stamped on the 'Sci-Fi' label in order to draw an audience, or perhaps because her publisher refused to authorize a genre switch. I hope that isn't true, because that's always a cheap move. This is just modern pop-fiction, an 'emotionally confessional' book with a veneer of 'vaguely near-future'.

This wouldn't have been a problem if Moon had used this opportunity to explore human psychology, which was how 'Algernon' and 'A Clockwork Orange' treated this same theme, but she didn't. She rehashed half of an interesting idea, and failed to capitalize on it.

Speculative Fiction has always been obsessed with what makes us human, and how much we can change before we stop being human at all. While that should be the main theme of this book, it goes almost unexplored.

The climax is rushed and inauthentic. We never actually see the character change, we don't witness the effects as they happen, instead they are lightly explained in choppy montage at the end. Compared to the rest of the book--an internal, step-by-step presentation of a fairly different mind--this sudden, convenient, external ending is disappointing and jarring.

The denouement following the climax is particularly tidy, with all the subtlety of the end of an 80's college movie where we learn through super-imposed text that "Barry went on to win the Nobel prize" to the strains of Simple Minds.

And it's a shame, because the story leading up to the climax is interesting enough, presenting the psychological workings of autism. Moon researched this disorder much better than Mark Haddon in his laughably flawed 'Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night Time', but then, Moon's son is actually autistic.

There was also a part about fencing, which excited me at first, being a former competitive fencer and coach, but instead, it was just weird SCA dressup boffing. Not that I have anything against SCA dressup boffing (or do I?).

It's an alright read, goes pretty quick, and it might give you some insight into brain disorders, but it doesn't tie human experiences together; which is really a shame, because other sci fi books have successfully used this topic to ask some very difficult and profound questions about how the future of technology might change the way we think, and about the different ways people process information.

'Flowers for Algernon' tackled the exact same themes and was written sixty years before Moon's less profound attempt. You'd think we'd have something more to say after sixty years of neurology and psychology, but apparently not. It also pales in comparison with 'A Clockwork Orange', another good light sci fi which explores the morality of changing the way that people think.

This book was light and fluffy, especially given its subject matter, and while it will probably make soccer moms feel proud of themselves for reading something so 'different', it doesn't endeavor to change the way they think about humanity, the mind, or the possibilities within us....more

A thriller devoid of pacing or exciting language. A mystery devoid of clues, foreshadowing, or facts. A tell-all of half-truths based upon a forged doA thriller devoid of pacing or exciting language. A mystery devoid of clues, foreshadowing, or facts. A tell-all of half-truths based upon a forged document written by a schizophrenic conman. A character-driven modern novel devoid of character. The second draft of Angels and Demons. Page-turning action thanks to the literary equivalent of pulling out at the moment of orgasm. A spiritual awakening built on new-age conspiracy theory. This book is many things, and none of them good, new, or interesting. However, it is an excellent litmus test for idealistic delusion.

Upon the first reading, I must admit I found it a bit interesting, but then I turned the final page, and there was no bibliography. No explanation of how the author became familiar with all the concepts he claimed to 'faithfully portray'. He wrote this book and pretended it was a history book, and then refused to support it in any way. And any history you can't check up on is a bad one.

He's no better than James Frey. In fact, he may be worse, since I know people who base their religious beliefs on this book, whereas Frey's only crime was wishing he was Scarface. And really, what macho thirtysomething male doesn't?

Brown had good reasons for hiding his sources: they were forged by con-man Pierre Plantard and snuck into the Bibliotheque National in Paris back in the seventies. And it's not like Plantard got away with it, either--the whole 'Priory of Sion' thing was debunked thirty years before this book was even written.

The artistic 'iconography' that figures heavily into the mystery is also completely made-up, and was declared ludicrous by an art history professor of my acquaintance. There are a lot of well-known symbols and allusions in classic art, but none of them resemble Brown's claims. The whole hinge on which the plot turns--the notion that an inverted triangle is automatically symbolic of women--makes about as much sense as declaring that the use of the swastika by 3rd century, BC Buddhists was proof that they were fascists.

The rest of Brown's book is filled with the sort of cliched religious conspiracies you get from your first year as a theology student. Not only that, but these conspiracies were already explored by better writers in 'Foucault's Pendulum' and the 'Illuminatus! Trilogy'.

Well, I've already done more legitimate historical research on this review than Brown did in his whole book, so I guess I'll call it a day....more

Moorcock has posited himself as the rebel of fantasy, sapping the high walls built by Howard and Tolkien. He is a well-spoken and thoughtful critic ofMoorcock has posited himself as the rebel of fantasy, sapping the high walls built by Howard and Tolkien. He is a well-spoken and thoughtful critic of the complete lack of romance in either of these would-be romances, but the love in Gloriana's court is anything but courtly.

There is a delightful Quentin Crisp quote about how innovation is not 'seeing your neighbor to the left has a straight walk and your neighbor to the right a curved and thence making your own diagonal', suffice it to say that contrariness is not the mother of invention.

Moorcock's Elric was, in many ways, written to be contrary; to be the antithesis of the fantasy that came before. However, Moorcock is not being contrary in this case. In fact, he's not even being particularly original. In most regards, Gloriana reads like an abridged Elizabethan take on Peake's Gormenghast books (which, incidentally, are the origin of Crisp's quotation, by way of his introduction).

Gloriana is considered by highfalutin Moorcock fans to be perhaps his most remarkable and original work. It is certainly in no way genre Fantasy, and though the characters may not be easy to empathize with, you certainly won't be stuck resenting them for flimsily facaded archetypes.

Though they are not based upon those same silly cliches, they are still immediately as one-dimensional and unchanging. The book is really nothing so much as an eroticized rewrite of Peake, and Moorcock does not have the capacious wit necessary to evoke Peake. It is more of a fond imitation than a reimagining.

That being said, it takes a skilled writer to draw any comparisons to Peake, even when that's precisely what they are trying to do.

The book will also teach you the word 'seraglio'; a one which I hope to have more and more a need to use in the future, hopefully in the same sentence as 'odalisque'.

The title story of this collection is exactly what you would expect of a fairy tale written by a minister and subtitled 'a parable', which is to say iThe title story of this collection is exactly what you would expect of a fairy tale written by a minister and subtitled 'a parable', which is to say it's not particularly fantastical, and feels a great deal like reading a sermon. Condescending and blandly didactic--MacDonald never lets an image or symbol stand on its own, but must always hem and haw about it, telling us what is right and what is not.

There is little enough wonder in it--we are told what to think and why. the focus is always on little errors and rules and flaws of character, never upon anything grander, nothing to ignite man’s imagination or awe--indeed, it is all terribly petty.

He seems to think of children as awful little monsters, naturally disposed to self-destruction--and the only way to fix them is to put them through a series of strange tortures. They are not corrected and taught by example, or by interaction, or explanation, or by forming any kind of genuine relationship with the child, but rather by leaving them alone and letting them grow more and more confused, miserable, and terrified. At one point the 'wise woman' uses her magic to make a child think she has accidentally killed her playmate.

Of course, anyone familiar with the tradition of English Boarding schools, whether through 'school stories' or the autobiographical accounts of figures like Roald Dahl, C.S. Lewis, and George Orwell will recognize this sort of distant, abusive ‘hard love’ that English schooling became infamous for.

His view of humanity just comes off as so negative--so prejudiced and judgmental--and at the same time condescending. The Wise Woman of the story is entirely convinced that hers is the proper way, that no matter what she puts the children through, abandoning, confusing, and demanding things of them, it is the right thing, and will prove so in the end. Of course, in fantasy the author can create whatever sort of world they want, one which reflects his own whims and judgments, and which in the end justifies them, producing whatever effect is required.

That is why didactic works like this are so far inferior to open-ended works like Dunsany’s, which show us remarkable things, lead us through strange, new thoughts, instead of insisting that we take from it any particular message or lesson.

Dunsany is not top-down, he does not require that you believe as he does--he is not so conceited. Instead, he intends to open the world to you--not to tell you something which he thinks you ought to know, but to share an experience with you, not doling out from on high, but engaging in a give-and-take--an opportunity for both author and reader to learn and grow and see the world anew.

All in all, it is not surprising to learn that MacDonald mentored C.S. Lewis, as there is that same sense of being alternately scolded and coddled by a pretentious schoolmaster. However, the last few stories which make up this collection, while much briefer, do not suffer from this same voice. They are a bit plain, but they are not judgmental or sermonizing--indeed, there are some clever and humorous bits of dialogue in them.

It gives me hope that perhaps some of MacDonald's other stories are more pleasant and wondrous, and that I've just chanced to stumble upon him at his worst--I've certainly heard promising things about works like Phantastes and The Princess and the Goblin, but I fear it will be some time before this foul taste disperses and I feel up to cracking open another of his books....more

Milton wrote this while blind, and claimed it was the result of divine inspiration which visited him nightly. There are few texts that could reasonablMilton wrote this while blind, and claimed it was the result of divine inspiration which visited him nightly. There are few texts that could reasonably be added into the Bible, and this is certainly one of them (the Divine Comedy is another). Paradise Lost outlines portions of the Bible which, thanks to its haphazard combination of mythic stories, are never fully explored.

In fact, most of Paradise Lost has become tacitly accepted into the Christian mythos, even if most Christians do not recognize it as a source. It also updated not only the epic, but the heroic form, and its questioning of the devil is a great philosophical exploration, even if it may ultimately prove a failure, as I shall try to explain.

The question remains: even if the Vatican did not explicitly include it, why are there not smaller sects which so often spring up around such and inspiring and daring work? The answer is that one need not explicitly include something that has been included implicitly. Many readers accept Milton's view of events as accurate and that it was wholly derived from the Bible, when in fact, it is largely an original work.

Under Constantine, Hell and the Devil were re-conceptualized. The representation of Hell in the Bible is often metaphorical, and does not include 'fire and brimstone'. Hell is defined as 'absence from God' and nothing more. This is supposed to be a painful and unfulfilling experience, but not literal physical torture.

Much of the modern conceptualization of Hell is based upon Hellenic mythological influences and verses from Revelation taken out of context. The place of 'fire and brimstone' is where the Devil and the Antichrist are put after the apocalypse, and is never stated as being related to human afterlife.

Likewise, the Devil is most commonly depicted as a greedy idiot chasing after farts. The only tempting he ever does Biblically is during Job, where he must first ask God if he is permitted to interfere. The concept of the Devil as a charming, rebellious trickster and genius is entirely Milton.

He portrays him this way to align Satan with the heroic figures of Epic Poetry. This is not because he thinks of the Devil as a hero, but rather so he can show that our heroes should not be rebellious murderers as they were in ancient stories, but humble, pious, simple men.

He gives the Devil philosophical and political motivations for rebelling, but has him fail to notice that God cannot be questioned or defeated. However, this requires that one absolutely believe this assertion without ever testing it. Anyone who accepts it unquestioningly (such as C.S. Lewis) is bound to believe that the Devil is foolish to question the natural order.

However, Milton himself states that the Devil had no choice but to doubt, and due to our own rational minds, man cannot help doubting either. In this case, we might fall in with Blake, and suggest that Milton was the Devil's man, not because he wanted to be, but because he carried biblical rhetoric to its rational conclusion.

This is illustrated in a rather shocking way in the creation of Eve: finding herself, utterly new to the world, she sees her own reflection in a puddle and, finding it beautiful, leans down naively and tries to kiss it. This amusing retelling of the myth of Narcissus indicates that God made women naturally autoerotic and bisexual.

Sadly, this never made it into modern Christianity, for some reason, but it does show the strength of Paradise Lost: Milton provides rhetorical support for every idea he explores, even those he did not side with. It is a great book of questions, and a book which demands the reader think and try to understand.

We are supposed to sympathize with the Devil because he is heroic and dangerous, but we also know he is the Devil. We know that to sympathize with him is wrong, and that he is supposed to be wrong. Milton here invented the concept of the Devil we cannot help but sympathize with, and who we must fight daily to overcome.

He defined sin as doubt, but without realizing that doubt will always deconstruct an old answer and suggest a new one. The fact remains that metaphysically, doubt can only injure us in a realm we cannot know exists. As the enemy of any tyranny--of men, of ideas--doubt is the helpmeet of all who struggle. The Devil is the father of doubt, and the final outcome of doubt is always accepting that we are fundamentally ignorant: either in our believing, or in our not believing.

He also uses the English language in an entirely idiomatic and masterful way, his is one of the few unique voices of English. Reading him sometimes proves a challenge for those without a background in Latin, since his sentence structure and particularly his verb use are stripped-down and multipurpose, taking the form of metaphysical poets to its logical conclusion.

He is also one of the most knowledgeable and allusive of writers, especially when it comes to the longer form. His encyclopedic exploration of myths, reinvention of scenes, and adoption of ideas make this work one of the most wide-reaching and interconnected in English.

This can make his work somewhat daunting for readers, who are often unwilling to read the books he references in preparation for tackling him, which I find rather ironic, since no one complains about having to read ten-thousand pages of Harry Potter before tackling the last book....more

My friends call me Senex ('The Old Man') because of my taste in fantasy, or they would, if I had any. It's often been noted that I'll give at least foMy friends call me Senex ('The Old Man') because of my taste in fantasy, or they would, if I had any. It's often been noted that I'll give at least four stars to any fantasy from the Italian Renaissance, and yet rarely give more than two for anything written since the nineteen-sixties. Some have accused me of a staunch prejudice in period, but lo! it is not so.

I really love the fantasy genre, but the corollary of this is that I hate most fantasy books, because of how they mistreat that which I love. Whenever I am called to task for loving old books and despising new ones, I give a silent thanks to China Mieville for writing a book within the last decade that I can, with all honesty and aplomb, say is both eminently enjoyable and well-written.

There are so many rich veins that run through the history of fantastical literature, from the epics, the matter of France, and fairy tales to metaphysical poetry and the pulps; and yet today, the core of the genre is content to keep digging deeper into a spent shaft. Mieville's work shines because he divines more unusual sources of inspiration and then carefully prises, polishes, and sets them.

One thread Mieville draws on are the 'Weird' authors of early century pulp, who combined horror, fantasy, and science fiction, and didn't delineate where one ended and the other began. Science fiction cannot just sit on its laurels like fantasy, if only because it is constantly outstripped by new science and technology.

Lovecraft fantasized Verne, LeGuin fantasized Doc Smith, and Mieville has a whole new world of bursting technologies to draw from. The information and biotech boom led to an entirely new vision of the future, completely unavailable to writers of the Silver or Golden age, one which was snatched up by the young, hungry, dirty Cyberpunk writers.

If there were an easy way to sum up his work, you might say Mieville has written a 'cyberpunk fantasy', concentrating on the same flawed, sprawling cities, plucky heroes, and confirmation that knowledge is more valuable than martial puissance. Not since Snowcrash have I read a book that was as fun as it is intelligent. Both authors have worlds that are underpinned by ideas and philosophies.

For Stephenson, it was the social theory of Jaynes, but for Mieville, it's economics. As an economist, he can't help but enumerate the world; for him, events unerringly lead back to fundamental causes like need, supply, gain, and zero-sum games. This isn't overt in his books, it's merely the mechanism that underpins the drive of his plot.

Perhaps this explains why he was drawn to a setting reminiscent of the Victorian and not the Medieval, since economic historians suggest that, before this period, economics could hardly have existed as a science, since the fundamental questions which underpin it had no answer in a system based on guild and fealty. But once economics bloomed, it did so grandly, such that economics could be the basis for a fantasy or a farce.

Yet Mieville's particular economic views are not the theme of the story. He is not a moralist, but a cynic, capable of representing the failure of good ideas (even one he believes in) and the success of harmful ones. His 'gritty realism' is not merely a collage of pointless sex, violence, and cruelty (like some other fantasy authors I could name), but a representation of necessary evils, difficulties, and desires.

But he is not merely a Cyberpunk author dabbling in fantasy, any more than Lovecraft was a fantasist who wrote about space aliens. Indeed, Mieville takes notes from Lovecraft, remembering that the most interesting magic is that which is only vaguely explained, and which suggests a strange and interesting world beyond the characters' understanding. I still recall the throwaway line "some plankton from a huge brine dimension" in The Scar sparking my imagination more than entire books by other authors, and of course, evoking the colliding branes of String Theory.

The mindless 'grey goo' antagonists are equally Lovecraftian, but Mieville does more interesting things with The Weaver, an unfathomable huge spider who exists between space and time. So many authors after Lovecraft tried to bring the Mythos closer to human understanding, giving the unknowable beings dialogue and motivation, but nothing kills frighteningly alien creatures faster than poorly-written dialogue; indeed, I would have said giving the creatures any level of comprehensible consciousness ruins them, but I'm glad to be proven wrong.

The Weaver is neither ally nor antagonist, nor does his dialogue bring him down to our level. If anything, it makes him seem more uncanny, since it is easier to shrug off some silent terror than to discover something that almost seems to make sense, but the truths it dances around suggest a world we would not wish to understand, because it is inconceivable, overawing, and deeply ironic.

But then, that is the scientific lesson from which Mieville profits: on both the micro- and macro-levels: the universe seems to flaunt everything we take for granted. The spider could be telling men about Heisenbergian concepts of non-causality and total existence failure and be no less right nor any less unnerving.

And yet, for all Mieville's gravitas, there is something undeniably frivolous and delightful about his characters. They never get so bogged-down in their difficulties that they lose the fundamental vivacity with which he endows them.

It is rare to find an author who deals with such vibrant surrealism, and yet is capable of reigning it in before it overwhelms the story. Mervyn Peake might be the master of using carefully-rationed absurdism to create a world more realistic and believably than any stark vision of Post-Modern Realism. Like Peake, Mieville's characters and setting are always strange enough to seem unusually real.

Some have suggested that this frivolity undermines the very serious questions and ideas he presents elsewhere, but I, for one, am glad to find him capable of reveling in joy, for Nietzsche once observed that "excess is not the result of joy, but joylessness".

I compared Mieville favorably to Snowcrash, but Stephenson's other books simply cannot measure up to his first success, and it is because they are joyless. They delve passionately into ideas and minutia, but do not revel in the characters, the place, or the events. I would rather an author dance lightly across his treatise than for a moment begin to imagine that what he writes is portentous and grandiose.

Nor does Mieville err too far on the other side of the fantastical: for all the implausible absurdity of his setting and characters, he never gives in to the temptation to turn the book into a nonsensical fever dream. Unlike Calvino's Invisible Cities, Mieville does not lose himself in the false profundity of metaphysics, and never once suggests the meaningless New Age aphorism that "I am remarkable precisely because I know that I am ignorant". What is remarkable in the mind of man is the cusp of knowledge, not the unknown that lies beyond it.

His story is infused with the search for knowledge and understanding, which plays through all his economic causes, his scientific metaphysical exploration (no less far-fetched than M-theory, and considerably more accessible), and, of course, the pseudo-scientific interests of his characters. What prevents this from dragging down into the sort of detail-mashing explanations that can kill a good book (or a good idea), is that Mieville is more interested in the love of discovery than in stagnating over what is already known.

Every book should be as concerned (and excited) with discovery: as readers, we are always discovering, always mulling over, always seeking to turn the next page and renew ourselves with an unexpected turn or the final arrival of some foreshadowed conclusion.

By seeking out strange and varied inspirations for his work, Mieville has shown once again that an author is only as good as the works he draws from, and only as original as the ideas he adopts. He rejects Tolkien's empty wilderness and ancient stone palisades for Henry Mayhew's London and Gibson's Tokyo. He invests his magic with alchemy, quantum theory, and transhuman biotech. He replaces heroism and escapism with economic theory and passionate individualism.

He has more world, more character, and more plot than most fantasists, and yet it is not overwrought, it is all a romp, all a vivacious and unapologetic adventure. Most genre writers not only have higher literary pretensions, but fail to deliver on them, while at the same time having less fun doing it. Mieville puts them to shame. I can only hope fantasy authors of the future will be inspired by him, and save this genre from itself and its ponderous, long-winded Old Guard.

There may be none, outside of perhaps Rabelais, who may so decorously handle the refuse of the world. The Devil's Dictionary is a guidebook for the miThere may be none, outside of perhaps Rabelais, who may so decorously handle the refuse of the world. The Devil's Dictionary is a guidebook for the mind of man, and perhaps a certain delicacy becomes necessary when exploring something so rude and unappealing. There is perhaps no greater illustration that the answer of 'why do bad things happen to good people' is: because it is much funnier that way....more

Remarkable book. I have been, on occasion, accused of some sort of self-set elitism which suffuses my opinions and critiques on literature. It seems pRemarkable book. I have been, on occasion, accused of some sort of self-set elitism which suffuses my opinions and critiques on literature. It seems people are often more likely to think one has an ulterior motive for liking or not liking a book rather than looking at the presented arguments. In any case, I would posit this book as the countermand to that sentencing. It is not a literary book, as such, as it does not place itself in a deep referential or metaphorical state. Though it is certainly influenced by many great works, it is, in its whole, no more nor less than the reigning king of the pulp adventures.

Built on the ridiculous, the humorous, the exciting, and deeply in the characters, this work creates a world of romance (in that oh-so-classic sense) and adventure which conscripts the reader and delivers him to the front lines. I am alway amazed by this book's ability to invoke lust, pity, wonder, respect, scorn, and hatred, all while driving along a plot filled with new events and characters.

Should there be any future for Fantasy, it lies not in the hands of Tolkien-copying machines, nor even in Moorecock's 'un-fantasy', but in whatever writer can capture Beowulf, The Aeneid, The Three Musketeers, or The White Company and make a world which is exciting not because everything is magical and strange, but because everything is entirely recognizable, but much stranger. Of course, one may want to avoid going Mervyn Peake's route with this, and take a lesson from the driving plot and carefree frivolity that Dumas Pere and his innumerable ghostwriters adhered to.

It is amusing here to note that Dumas has accredited to his name far more books than he is likely to have ever written. As he was paid for each book with his name on it, he made a sort of 'writing shop' where he would dictate plots, characters, or sometimes just titles to a series of hired writers and let them fill in the details.

So, praises be to Dumas or whichever of his unrecognized hirees wrote such a work....more

A delightful and strange adventure story in the vein of The Three Musketeers or The Scarlet Pimpernel, but also an early foreshadow of the MannerpunkA delightful and strange adventure story in the vein of The Three Musketeers or The Scarlet Pimpernel, but also an early foreshadow of the Mannerpunk genre which grew out of Peake's Gormenghast books.

The well-researched text creates a believable world which is undoubtedly (and delightfully) removed from the modern. Not only does Doyle (of Sherlock Holmes fame) create a fairly accurate portrait of ever-warring Feudal Europe, but at least proposes a psychological type for the soldiers of the time.

Of course, to take such a type from (even contemporary) works is a bit of a silly falsehood, and with characteristic British whimsy, Doyle births a cast which seems realistic not despite but because of its deep-seated eccentricity. Of course, it is precisely this method which will grip Peake (in the wake of Chekhov) in his surrealistic works.

Though once quite popular, this tale has become somewhat less well-known, perhaps because it is easy to take from it a stance of bravado, militarism, and anglocentrism. Perhaps there will come to us a dissolving of such strong self-identifications with such things that people will no longer feel a need to oppose fictional portrayals, and Doyle and Kipling may return with a grain of salt....more

Feels like a grown up (but actually less disturbing) Alice in Wonderland. Gaiman's strengths as a purveyor of the odd and mystical come through. CharaFeels like a grown up (but actually less disturbing) Alice in Wonderland. Gaiman's strengths as a purveyor of the odd and mystical come through. Characterizations are excellent, especially amongst odd and otherworldy characters, which sometimes fell flat in American Gods.

Gaiman plays with the monomyth humorously (if not as much so as Douglas Adams). Television series was alright, but missed the mark. Would be great to see a version with Martin Freeman and equally strong casting for the horrific yet amusing villains.

I actually picked up a signed copy at a local shop when Gaiman and I were both living in Minnesota. I've read a lot of Gaiman, and while appreciate thI actually picked up a signed copy at a local shop when Gaiman and I were both living in Minnesota. I've read a lot of Gaiman, and while appreciate that he is always a conscious, active writer, his stories sometimes fall flat for me.

They always work on the principle of a small person trapped in a large, unknown world. There are plenty of great examples of this story type, and Gaiman has been steadily working through them. He took inspiration from Fairy Tales in Stardust, from European myth in American Gods, and African myth in Anansi Boys. Though Morpheus was no small man, the individual story arcs dealt with normal folks. Sandman and Good Omens worked off of Christian mythos, while Neverwhere created myths from modern symbols.

If Neverwhere is a rewrite of Alice in Wonderland, Coraline is in some ways an even closer take on Carroll, except that here, Gaiman is exploring a more overtly frightening world, evoking Gothic ghost stories. Unlike his other stories, Gaiman has less to draw on here. He is not bringing in specific myths, but rather creating his own symbols. Since he is not bringing in the many and varied elements that mark most of his tales, Coraline sets a much barer stage.

When he does bring in mythological elements, he always put his own spin on them, so he cannot be faulted for a lack of creative force. Indeed, he is at his most engaging when he is exploring and subverting various world mythologies, of which he is well-versed.

Even in the less mythologized Neverwhere, he drew on the visual imagery and history of London itself, a great city which traces its roots from before Rome, and is not without its own legends. By eschewing any particular tradition in Coraline, Gaiman has little to play with. He has nothing to subvert, nothing to vaguely reference. He cannot play upon our expectations.

All this tracks back to the reason that Gaiman explores these mythologies in the first place: his interest in writing about storytelling itself. Each time he writes, he places himself in a tradition, recognizing how the ancients used myth and symbol to create stories that instruct, inspire, and surprise.

Coraline does not explore its own origins. It does not display the genre savvy play of Gaiman's other work. It is not an exploration of the ghost story, nor of 'Through the Looking-Glass'. It is not a deconstruction of the Gothic.

It is a simple little tale, and not without its charm. I found little frightening about it, simply because there was little that was either unexpected or psychologically gripping. The most interesting element was the way he played with how we learn about identity.

There is a point in childhood when we suspect that there us something that makes up identity beyond simply the appearance or form. The idea that a parent or friend could be replaced by a doppelganger is inherently terrifying. However, Gaiman does not produce a new twist on doppelgangers or changelings.

Neither did the portrayal utilize surprise or subtlety to develop an unsettling mood. Rather, he presented overtly frightening or alien elements, bolstered by the characters' reactions.

But it's not frightening to simply show scary things. Hearing a strange noise in the woods is not the same as being told that a character hears a strange noise in the woods. It only becomes frightening when the vividness of the description or the realism of the character's psychology allows us to tap into that sense of fear.

This little story could have made a passable entry in a horror story collection, but is not original enough to stand on its own. I found this rather odd, since Gaiman is entirely capable of creating frightening stories, as evidenced by the fairy tale rewrite 'Snow, Glass, Apples' (from 'Smoke and Mirrors').

He has been frightening, disturbing, and unusual elsewhere, but here, I found little to speak of his creative flair....more

Even before I was shown the meaning of life in a dream at 17 (then promptly forgot it because I thought I smelled pancakes), IThe universe is a joke.

Even before I was shown the meaning of life in a dream at 17 (then promptly forgot it because I thought I smelled pancakes), I knew this to be true--and yet, I have always felt a need to search for the truth, that nebulous, ill-treated creature. Adams has always been, to me, to be a welcome companion in that journey.

Between the search for meaning and the recognition that it's all a joke in poor taste lies Douglas Adams, and, luckily for us, he doesn't seem to mind if you lie there with him. He's a tall guy, but he'll make room.

For all his crazed unpredictability, Adams is a powerful rationalist. His humor comes from his attempts to really think through all the things we take for granted. It turns out it takes little more than a moment's questioning to burst our preconceptions at the seams, yet rarely does this stop us from treating the most ludicrous things as if they were perfectly reasonable.

It is no surprise that famed atheist Richard Dawkins found a friend and ally in Adams. What is surprising is that people often fail to see the rather consistent and reasonable philosophy laid out by Adams' quips and absurdities. His approach is much more personable (and less embittered) than Dawkins', which is why I think of Adams as a better face for rational materialism (which is a polite was of saying 'atheism').

Reading his books, it's not hard to see that Dawkins is tired of arguing with uninformed idiots who can't even recognize when a point has actually been made. Adams' humanism, however, stretched much further than the contention between those who believe, and those who don't.

We see it from his protagonists, who are not elitist intellectuals--they're not even especially bright--but damn it, they're trying. By showing a universe that makes no sense and having his characters constantly question it, Adams is subtly hinting that this is the natural human state, and the fact that we laugh and sympathize shows that it must be true.

It's all a joke, it's all ridiculous. The absurdists might find this depressing, but they're just a bunch of narcissists, anyhow. Demnading the world make sense and give you purpose is rather self centered when it already contains toasted paninis, attractive people in bathing suits, and Euler's Identity. I say let's sit down at the bar with the rabbi, the priest, and the frog and try to get a song going. Or at least recognize that it's okay to laugh at ourselves now and again. It's not the end of the world.

Adams was an amazingly humorous fellow, but it can be easy to forget that the source of his humor is always surreal profundity. It's as if he sees a cAdams was an amazingly humorous fellow, but it can be easy to forget that the source of his humor is always surreal profundity. It's as if he sees a completely different world than the rest of us, but one which looks precisely the same. In this book (out-of-print when I found an editor's proof copy) Adams takes that hilariously disparate view and directs it like a spastic and noodly laser at the mis-management of our natural world. There is a reason that Richard Dawkins recalls Adams so fondly as a compatriot in the fight for reason. Adams is as honest, sublime, and disarming as ever.

I personally don't believe in a static view of nature. Extinction--even mass-extinction--has been a constant theme throughout prehistory. Humanity isn't even the first single species to cause the mass extinction of a huge variety of animals: algae did it millions of years before humans even existed.

Animals compete for the same resources, and whenever there are changes in the environment, be they geographical or climatic, there are going to be extinctions as different species come into contact in new ways. Despite what a lot of badly-researched sci fi might tell you, evolution is not a process of improvement: no species is any more evolved than any other species, each species has simply evolved in different ways to meet the requirements of a different ecological niche.

The coelecanth was a fish that first crawled out of the water hundreds of millions of years ago, and which we assumed had gone extinct until one was caught in 1975. That fish's descendents eventually produced the first lizards, which produced the first mammals, which produced the first primates, which eventually produced human beings. Yet, just because we evolved from the lowly coelecanth does not mean that we are 'more highly evolved'--stick a human being and a coelecanth in the middle of the ocean for a few days and it should be clear that we are just evolved to do different sorts of things.

Part of the reason we're experiencing high rates of extinction right now is that there are more species now than at any other point, and a huge number of those species are extremely specialized to a certain type of lifestyle, meaning even a small adjustment in their environment is likely to drive them to extinction. Mr. Tibbles was a naughty cat: he hunted an entire species to extinction by himself. This was the Stephens Island Wren, a flightless bird which had evolved to live on nothing but the algae that accumulated on the rocky island.

This is not evidence that Mr. Tibbles was more evolved than the wren, because Mr. Tibbles, left alone on the island, couldn't do what the wren did: survive off the island's resources. The reason cats, goats, rabbits, and pigs have been successful when introduced in new areas is because they are generalists, not specialists. They can survive in a wide variety of environments even when they are not the animal best-suited to that environment, because in times of change and upheaval, generalists outperform specialists.

A group of scientists were testing the behavior of flies and discovered that if the flies entered an area and there was no food there, almost none of the flies would ever return to that area. Then, the scientists began to wait until the flies had checked an area, and then put food there after they left. Within a few generations, the flies who returned had been much more successful, and so their offspring predominated. Now nearly all the flies would return to the same areas, again and again.

Yet, when the scientists reset the test to the original conditions, the specialized behavior died out, after only a few generations, because spending the time and energy and brain space on that behavior was just not worth it. It's the same reason that isolated bird populations tend to become flightless: flight is great for moving around and escaping enemies, but it takes a lot of energy to maintain, so if all you have to sustain you is algae, and there are no predators to flee, you might as well drop the showy flight thing and use those calories to keep your body warm and alive.

One of the great benefits of this process to humans is that all of those horrible, terrifying treatment-resistant diseases we have produced by overuse (and misuse) of antibiotics are highly specialized, and so, if we just drastically reduce antibiotic use, normal, generalist strains of e. coli will drastically outperform specialist, antibiotic resistant strains and drive them out of the ecosystem, which is exactly what has happened in Scandinavia where antibiotic treatment reduction is already in place.

No matter what humans do, we won't wipe out life, and we won't 'destroy the environment', we'll just change it. There are bacteria that live on radioactive rods in the middle of nuclear power plants, and on boiling, magma-fed vents at the lightless bottom of the sea, and there are even bacteria that can live in a sterile, sealed container eating nothing but solar radiation. Sure, we could change the environment so much that we would kill off all the large animals, including ourselves, and most plants, but something else will just survive and take over. The Chernobyl site is now one of the most lush and wild natural preserves in all of Russia.

There is no single, static way for the world to be--the environment and the animals that live in it are always changing, and to some degree, humans complaining about the extinction of certain specialized animals is like an old person complaining that the world isn't 'like it used to be'. Just because the environment was the way it was when humans evolved, that doesn't mean it is the only way for the environment to be, or that it won't change, or that change is bad, or that we should or could stop that change.

But we should ask whether we want to destroy ourselves, whether we want to set up an environmental system that favors superbacteria and destructively invasive species, because in the end, it's not about the world, it's about us and what we have to live with. The world will get along fine without us, after all....more

Sigh, just what we need, another revolutionary, unusual fantasy book by an author with a practiced mastery of tone. When will authors like Clarke realSigh, just what we need, another revolutionary, unusual fantasy book by an author with a practiced mastery of tone. When will authors like Clarke realize that what the fantasy genre needs are more pseudo-medieval monomyths that sprawl out into fifteen volumes?

Her magic didn't conveniently solve all of the characters' problems, instead, they wasted time thinking through conflicts and then had to solve them by taking action; how dull is that? The magic was weird, anyways. It didn't have a simplistic, internal system to allow it to act as a one-for-one substitute with technology, it was just all unpredictable and otherworldly and unknowable--how can you even call that 'magic'?

And the characters were overly-complicated. Instead of acting as recognizable archetypes, they were complex, conflicted, and developed as the story progressed. For some reason, they also seemed hesitant to fall back on the default plan of attacking anything that gets in their way, which was probably why this book was so long. I guess they just didn't have a strong enough sense of honor to instantly kill anyone who opposed them.

And then, instead of having her characters laboriously explain how the world worked to each other, she made brief mentions in footnotes, as if she were writing a history. I'm not sure why she made this decision, I often explain to my friends in basic terms how cars and money work in our culture, so it's clear that endless expositionary dialogue is the most realistic way to inform the reader. I mean, I guess you could just have the omniscient narrator tell us everything in detail, that's almost as good.

Come to think of it, this book had a lot of history stuff, it was almost like she had read a whole bunch about the period her book was set in, which is such a waste of time, because if that's what I wanted, I'd just read a history book. I mean sure, the author could take some vague things from a period, but otherwise they should just treat everything as if it were the modern day so it'll make sense. Besides, if she had any errors, she could just remind us that 'it's fiction!', so it's all fake anyways and it's pointless to try to make it seem real.

I guess she thought she was Jane Austen, or something, gradually building a tonal portrait of the world and revealing the characters through details of action and conversation. I don't know why she would try to write like those boring, old, dead authors, they wouldn't have to make us read them in school if they were good.

I should have known it was going to be bad when I saw it had footnotes in it, like a textbook or something, but I tried not to read any of them because I didn't want to accidentally learn some stupid fact (and then be STUCK with it FOREVER), because I'm saving up that brain space to memorize the lineage of the ninth house of the Dragonpriests of Ur, or maybe which incantation can counterspell the splash damage effect of a lesser draconic fireball.

So the whole book, I kept waiting for one of the women to be raped (or at the very least threatened with rape), or maybe enslaved, or for someone to be put in a collar and tortured by a woman in leather, or to be spanked in public as part of some cultural ritual, or to walk through flames while spraying breastmilk everywhere, or some other perfectly normal expression of human sexuality, but don't bother waiting, you'll only be disappointed. Really, the only thing that could have made it worse is if it were illustrated by Charles Vess, like the equally hopeless sequel.

So yeah, basically this book is WAY TOO LONG! I mean, it was totally worth it for me to read the first five twelve-hundred-page books of the Dragonkingspell Cycle, because it does start to get good at book six, but that's nothing compared to how much it tried my patience to read this book. I probably wouldn't have been able to finish it if I hadn't already been waiting twelve years for Jeb R.R.R. Franzibald to finish book seven.

But I guess if you like a well-researched, historically accurate book that doesn't tell the same, familiar story, doesn't use magic as a plot facilitator, reads like a Gothic novel, slowly builds the story based on psychologically-developed characters, and is obsessed with tone, then this is the book for you! Congratulations.

Otherwise, you can sit around with me and hope the author of our favorite series doesn't die before finishing vol. XVIII of The Epic Magic Sword of the Undead Dragon Throne Saga Duovigintilogy, where we will finally discover whether the badass, outcast, swordmaster, dragonrider assassin prince defeats the great evil, once and for all (with the help of his trusty albino wolf/girlfriend, of course).

Smith's evocative and energetic drawings tell an enthusiastic and deeply-felt mini-epic. His simple chiaroscuro backgrounds create a fantastical but vSmith's evocative and energetic drawings tell an enthusiastic and deeply-felt mini-epic. His simple chiaroscuro backgrounds create a fantastical but very real world. His strange cartoons mix with caricatures of realism to produce an easy-to-understand psychological reality.

However his very strong characterization sometimes falls prey to simple archetype, which weakens the story and the suspension of disbelief. Otherwise a thoroughly enjoyable, funny, endearing, and exciting read.

Fun and exciting. A worthwhile story to be told, though the omission of the Thespians and other abuses of artistic license mark the fault of Miller'sFun and exciting. A worthwhile story to be told, though the omission of the Thespians and other abuses of artistic license mark the fault of Miller's sensationalism. Like the four-color comics before him, Miller takes archetypes and symbols and drives them full throttle to the epic, gun-blazing climax. Unfortunately, character and emotion suffer. This is not quite the liability that it could have been, as the Epic tradition is often purposefully guilty of the same and 300 fits into this tradition (or the modern swords & sandals permutation).

However, when Miller is forced to give up some of his control, the improvement of realistic emotion shows how good his work can be. In The Dark Knight Returns, he had to keep much of the character's past and could not transform him entirely into an unfeeling, heroic killing machine. Likewise, in the film adaptation of 300, the actors and director helped to infuse the characters with more emotion and depth.

All in all, 300 isn't a long enough read for Miller's drawbacks to really hurt it, and he picked a fittingly manly story to showcase his histrionic machismo.

I struggled for a long time with the growing notion that conservatives simply aren't funny. At first it seemed a silly idea, since conservatism drawsI struggled for a long time with the growing notion that conservatives simply aren't funny. At first it seemed a silly idea, since conservatism draws from sources as varied as progressivism: all levels of intelligence and wealth, all kinds of people from all walks of life--yet none of them are funny.

Certainly they can tell jokes and be charming, but not satirical, not biting. Subversion doesn't come naturally to them, and it should have been clear why: Conservatism relies on ideals, on grand heroic notions which are to be believed in. Progressives (or Liberals) rely on deconstruction of these notions, which is in itself a subversion.

That might not entirely explain the sad discrepancy between Doonesbury and Mallard Fillmore, but it's a start. I feel like this difference in mode is also to blame for some of the more common critiques of Alan Moore's work.

He's recently achieved notoriety as a Hollywood Gold Standard--and as the scowling, bearded mascot of rebranding 'Comics' as 'Graphic Novels' (despite the fact that Moore, Gaiman, and I all prefer the original term). As a product of this new visibility, he has been discovered by new readers, some of whom dismiss him as a subversive anarchist.

I agree that he is subversive, and that he is interested in exploring violent anarchism in his works, but he has too much subtlety to be saddled with the views of some of his characters. Critics can quickly identify attacks on their ideologies, but seem less skilled at seeing how an apparent 'progressive' like Moore simultaneously attacks his own representation of the agents of change.

Rorschach in Watchmen is a parody of the superhero staple of morality by violence (or is it the other way 'round?), a parody the film version completely fails to recognize. Likewise, 'V' is meant to be flawed, fraught and difficult, and Moore invites us to question his philosophies and methods.

Moore always gives his characters motives because his characters operate by their psychology: their history, their disposition, their experiences. But in 'V', Moore is giving us a background to establish a motive, which is why we might end up on V's side (beyond the David and Goliath trope).

Moore gives us this motive so that he can communicate his ideas clearly. We see that V's actions are accountable personally, which leads us to ask whether they are accountable socially, morally, or ethically. It is, after all, a story concerned with the nature of politics, power, subjugation, and resistance. Like a philosopher hashing out his ideas, Moore explores his theme by setting limits to focus the hypothesis.

Whether V can be excused or praised outside his personal motivations is another argument, but the fact that Moore has isolated and located this argument at a point in narrative space shows his thoughtful, deliberate mastery of the form.

Like Watchmen, the film version mostly strips out this layer of complexity, and is content (like the majority of action films or violent dystopias) to let this personal struggle be the end of the moral question, thus reducing V to a violent hero (or antihero). This idealized 'personal morality' is common not only in action movies, but in cape comics and conservatism--yet focusing on a wholly personal response precludes observing how politics works, or any grand social scale which is necessarily defined by the impersonal.

The personal is simply not important, not viable, and in the end, gets lost in the mix. The billions of personal elements counteract one another into a kind of Brownian Motion, stirring without direction, while the real forces of power move above them and alongside them, shaping the world.

Think of all the people acting out their personal moralities, proud as peacocks. You hear people talk about turning off the water when they brush their teeth despite the fact that more than ninety percent of water use is industrial. People buy free-range organic despite the fact that the money still goes to the same five companies (and the term 'organic' is entirely unregulated). People get self-satisfied about their Prius when five shipping tankers produce as many tons of emissions as all the cars in the world.

It is not that these personal beliefs cannot change things, in fact they often come to the forefront, but this change is momentary and complex, and hence, no great theory could be made to predict it, so it cannot be harnessed, only taken for granted by the forces of power. The more people act personally, the more they will be taken advantage of, impersonally.

It isn't surprising that critiques of Moore tend to focus on these personal, symbolic journeys, but that's simply not how Moore operates. Sympathy for his characters should be mistrusted, just as we must mistrust Milton's Satan; even with all his charm, it is the utmost foolishness not to recognize him for who he is.

You don't have to look hard to see these little subversions--these clues that something isn't right--but you do have to look. There is a fast-paced, exciting, complex plot atop it all, and it's easy to get caught up in Alan Moore's stories. Unlike some authors, Moore won't spell it out for you, but calling him an Anarchist is an oversimplification.

In interviews, Moore has said that an Anarchist state is one where the powerful rule the weak by fear and force of arms, noting that this describes every government and nation in history, no matter what florid terms are used to make such governance more appealing. Moore may use V to present the ideal of the Anarchist, but we must remember: he doesn't believe in ideals.

Which is why Alan Moore is funny. When you are quite sure that he is being serious, you can be certain that he is being funny. After all, the surest sign that we have ceased to think clearly about something is that we can no longer laugh at it. So remember: if you aren't laughing, you aren't thinking; and if you aren't thinking, then you definitely won't understand Moore.

I have a lot of friends who swear by Pratchett, but I found him rather dull. I tried reading the first book in the series, but I couldn't finish it. AI have a lot of friends who swear by Pratchett, but I found him rather dull. I tried reading the first book in the series, but I couldn't finish it. A friend suggested this as one of his better outings, so I bit.

He seems to harp on the most obvious jokes, extending one-note gags into paragraphs, chapters, or even whole books. I found that out of every ten jokes, one would make me laugh and nine would make me groan and roll my eyes. Really not a good rate of return.

His world-building is passable, but the combination of vaguely interesting world and vaguely amusing jokes don't combine into something greater. Pratchett has nothing on the oddball musings of contemporary Douglas Adams, and doesn't have the same level of wit or insight.

His generic fantasy world full of groan-worthy jokes reminds me of endlessly 'punny' American author Piers Anthony (thankfully, without the nods to pedophilia). As a Brit, Pratchett does have a certain refreshing command of language, but it's not enough to escape the huckster jokeyism.

The first series that showed it was possible to rewrite Tolkien and make a mint was Shannara. After that the doors were flung wide open, and the nextThe first series that showed it was possible to rewrite Tolkien and make a mint was Shannara. After that the doors were flung wide open, and the next to take advantage was Robert Jordan. Of course, all authors take some inspiration from older works, as Virgil did to Homer, and Milton to Virgil--and as Tolkien himself drew on the Norse Eddas and Welsh myths.

But when Tolkien and Virgil set out to write their great works, they expanded and changed what came before, and made it their own with a unique voice and vision. Jordan didn't have the knowledge of language, history, or culture to truly copy Tolkien's style, nor was he able to add a unique spin.

The Eye of The World is a more accessible version of Tolkien, but Tolkien is already a simplified version of the Norse Sagas, meaning that Jordan felt a need to dumb-down the accessible, which doesn't leave his book with much personality.

However, unlike other authors who choose a more straightforward take on Fantasy, Jordan kept the plodding length of Tolkien. It is difficult to comprehend how such a simple, familiar story could take so long to tell. Without the strange and engaging details of Tolkien's meticulously-developed world, Jordan lacks any of the complexity that might bolster such a long-winded style.

It's clear that he's trying to build a massive, detailed world, but it's not an interesting, original world. It wouldn't be so bad if the lengthy asides were interesting, in and of themselves. If each little piece was amusing in its own right, we might forgive. But instead, we get dry, lengthy explanations of extraneous facts that we have no reason to be curious about.

Some point out that these facts show up in later books of the series, which is probably true, but then, what are they doing in this book? If Mary first appears in book three, it is not useful or interesting to stop in the middle of book one and tell us she has blonde hair. Facts should not be evenly distributed throughout a series, they should be placed in close proximity to scenes that relate to them. That way they make sense to the reader and we have a reason to care about them.

If an author has to stop the story every few paragraphs to explain what's going on, that's a sign that his writing is simply not working. The world should be revealed to us through characters, through their interactions, through small details of verisimilitude, and with scenes designed specifically to illustrate a point without losing focus.

But Jordan's characters are dull and shallow, his dialogue bland, and his plot, though it possesses many parts, has few twists. We are given an unending parade of new characters and detailed digressions, which masterfully suck all the drive, purpose, and life from the story.

At half the length, the book would have been merely another two-star fantasy rehash. At a third the length, it might have started to show some pep. But Jordan had to stretch out his all-to-familiar story to doorstop proportions. Since he didn't add anything new or successfully copy the artistry of Tolkien's dense prose, he succeeded only in telling a short story in a long book.

In Tolkien, the first hundred pages takes place in quaint Hobbiton. This prelude prepares us for the rest of the book, allowing us to understand the strange world and characters and setting a mood. When the action takes us away, we find we had become attached to the bucolic charm of Hobbiton, sickly-sweet as it may sometimes be. But when we do depart, the world we meet is much grander in comparison.

In Eye of the World, you spend the first hundred and fifty pages in a drab farming community, so that when they finally leave, it will seem like something is happening. This is only a clever illusion.

The hero is an orphan who looks different, he gets his father's magic sword, he goes on a quest with an old, wily man, gets attacked by evil (dark-skinned) mongoloids, meets the princess by accident, becomes embroiled in an ancient prophecy, discovers a magic 'force' which controls fate (and the plot), &c., &c.

Stop me if you've heard this one before. Like a lot of modern fantasy, the plot and characters are nothing new. Every fantasy fan has read this same story again and again from countless authors--some, apparently on purpose.

There's no reason for this sort of repetition: a new book should be more than just fanfic of an older book. There are countless different influences out there, even before Tolkien touched pen to paper, there was Lord Dunsany, The Worm Ouroboros, H. P. Lovecraft, H. Rider Haggard, Robert E. Howard, Kipling, Ariosto, Spenser and E. Nesbit, to name a few.

Contemporary with and after Tolkien there are Mervyn Peake, Michael Moorecock, and Fritz Leiber. There is no reason for writing the same stories over and over when there are so many different inspirations out there. It is especially inexcusable when an author does this with mind-numbing long-windedness.

Also, like most fantasy authors, Jordan seems to have a problem writing female characters. They are either whiny and snotty, or emasculating ice queens. I couldn't count on both hands the fantasy authors who seem to think 'strong woman' means 'insufferable, unapologetic shrew'. Then again, the male characters aren't much better.

I've also been lead to understand that later on in the series, we get a magical band of lipstick lesbians who 'go straight' when they grow up (and meet 'real men', like our heroes), and some stuff about naked public spanking (that's not a joke--I wish it were). But I suppose that if Jordan resembles other genre writers in terms of plot, length, setting, and character, he might as well go all the way and throw in some misguided gender inequality.

And as the series goes on, the many problems with pacing, plotting, and unfocussed asides only grow worse. If Jordan can't keep everything straight in his opening book, how will he possibly deal when the story starts branching out, as stories tend to do? It is hardly surprising that such a tenuous grasp will inevitably slip away.

UPDATE: one might point to the endless repetition in modern literature as a sure sign that there is no God, no grand plan, and no purpose to the universe. A benevolent power would surely spare us the pain of such unending mediocrity.

However, if there were some deity, and he had a sense of humor, he would allow the uncreative authors to publish, to gain fame, until their series piled self-indulgently to the length of a minor encyclopedia, then let the author announce that he is finally approaching The End, only to perish on the cusp.

Since this is precisely what happened, I will have to keep an eye out for other signs of this humorous demiurge, possibly in the form of miraculous banana peels and hagiographic fright wigs.

Standard fantasy fare, except that while most fantasy authors lift their plots only vaguely from a previous author, Eragon is simply the plot of StarStandard fantasy fare, except that while most fantasy authors lift their plots only vaguely from a previous author, Eragon is simply the plot of Star Wars with a Lord of the Rings paintjob:

Princess flees, trying to keep precious item out of the evil emperor's hands. Boy finds item. Bad guys burn down his farm and kill his uncle. Old mysterious man helps him, and turns out to be part of a secret order of knights to which boy's (now evil) father belonged. Gives boy father's sword and takes him (eventually) to princess, then dies tragically. Boy learns how to fly X-Wings (er, dragons) and goes to take on his father and the evil emperor, &c., &c.

Paolini also resembles other fantasy authors by denying that he is a fantasy author, instead imagining that he is a great literary talent. In his own words:

"In my writing, I strive for a lyrical beauty somewhere between Tolkien at his best and Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf"(1)

Unfortunately, his control of language is more akin to a piece of Harry Potter fanfic. There are some days that I wish my parents ran their own publishing company, too. However, if such a boon would require me to write as obliviously as Paolini, I would have to decline.

Yeah, I know he was eighteen, but so was Byron when he wrote "Hours Of Idleness" and Pope when he wrote his "Essay on Criticism". If Paolini doesn't hesitate to compare himself to (what he sees as) literary greats, I certainly have no problem with letting my criticism fall with equal weight on his little bit of fluff.

I think the reason I keep returning to Pulp writers like Robert E. Howard is that those authors just wanted to write exciting stories instead of the next 'literary event'. Authors who lack pretension often write very good stories, because they aren't forcing themselves to write overblown, overly-complex stories. Many modern fantasy authors do the opposite: they write redundant escapist yarns and then get upset that no one considers them to be literary greats, yet.

There is nothing new or interesting here for anyone who has read fantasy before--it's just a rehash of old cliches. The writing, pacing, and characterization are substandard. I wasn't surprised to find that a teen boy wrote this book--it's exactly what I would expect a teenage fantasy fan to write.

It is always curious to see fantasy authors who don't consider themselves to be fantasy authors. Case-in-point: Terry Goodkind. The former landscape pIt is always curious to see fantasy authors who don't consider themselves to be fantasy authors. Case-in-point: Terry Goodkind. The former landscape painter has told us how he isn't a fantasy author in every interview he's ever given:

"The books I write are first of all novels, not fantasy, and that is deliberate; I'm really writing books about human beings."(1)

"To define me as a fantasy writer is to misunderstand the context of my books by misidentifying their fundamentals."(2)

"The stories I'm telling are not fantasy-driven, they're character-driven, and the characters I want to write about could be set in any world. I'd like to address a broader audience."(3)

""What I have done with my work has irrevocably changed the face of fantasy. In so doing I've raised the standards. I have not only injected thought into a tired empty genre, but, more importantly, I've transcended it showing what more it can be . . ."

Then the interview usually devolves into a discussion of Ayn Rand and 'the meaning of art', just in case you missed the pretension of declaring fantasy books 'not fantasy!'

The guy certainly has a chip on his shoulder, but it makes me wonder whether he has actually read any fantasy. He doesn't seem to realize that the things he claims separate him from fantasy are fundamental parts of how modern fantasy works. A novel that's fundamentally about character interactions with a magical setting? How droll. Goodkind doesn't reinventing the novel; he doesn't even reinvent the fantasy novel, he just twists the knobs to get a little more steam out of it.

Michael Moorcock critiqued Tolkien as a false romantic, which is rather apt considering that his love story takes place almost entirely in absentia (prompting Peter Jackson to infuse some extra loving with a hot, elven, psychic dream sequence). Most fantasy authors rectify this by having the girl come along for the journey. Goodkind likes to keep the separation for much of the story as our hero tries to seek her out across a continent (though she is often just in the next room! Oh! What a tragic coincidence!)

Actually, after the first time it's just an annoying and painfully artificial way to try to hold off the conclusion for another hundred pages. It's a good thing Terry doesn't have to rely on magical or artificial means to keep his stories fresh!

The rest of the time, the hero finds the girl and lovingly transfixes her on his mighty sword. No, really. I'm not sure why these authors always end up feeling as if they have to dump their sex fetish issues at this particular juncture: "Huh, I dig BDSM. Maybe I should confide my fantasies in a book for mass publication".

I cannot think of a single female character in the entire series who isn't either raped or threatened with rape. If you want to give me an example of one, remember: I'm counting magical psychic blowjob rape as rape. I wish I never had the opportunity to qualify a statement with 'don't forget the psychic blowjob rape'.

I don't mind actual BDSM literature, but I'd rather have my own reaction to it than be told "isn't it totally dirty and wrong!? (but still super sexy, right?)" Porn for porn's sake is fine, but remember, Goodkind isn't some escapist fantasy author, these are 'real stories about real people' so he has to act like his magic porn is somehow a reflection of real life.

Goodkind's books are cookie-cutter genre fantasy, but the first few aren't that badly done, and if you like people narrowly missing one another, bondage, masochism, rape, and dragons, it might work for you, but the series dies on arrival part-way through, so prepare for disappointment.

If you are enjoying the series, you should probably avoid reading any of his interviews, as he rarely misses an opportunity to claim that he is superior to all other fantasy authors, and never compare him to Robert Jordan, because

"If you notice a similarity, then you probably aren't old enough to read my books."(4)

Goodkind truly lives in his own fantasy world if he thinks his mediocre genre re-hash is 'original' or 'deep'.

Then again, I've never met an adherent of Ayn Rand who didn't consider themselves a brilliant and unique snowflake trapped in a world of people who 'just don't understand'. The Randian philosophies are also laid on pretty thickly in his books, but at least he found a substitute grandmother figure to help him justify his Gorean sex-romp as 'high art'.

All in all, he's just another guy who likes to hear himself talk. Despite what he says, nothing separates his work from the average modern fantasy author, and like them, his greatest failing is the complete lack of self-awareness that overwhelms his themes, plots, and characters.

I've read a lot of fantasy, and I've spent a lot of time looking for fantasy that won't disappoint. When fantasy disappoints me, it usually does so prI've read a lot of fantasy, and I've spent a lot of time looking for fantasy that won't disappoint. When fantasy disappoints me, it usually does so predictably: either the world is poorly-built, the entire story is derivative, it is filled with creepy repressed sexuality, or the Hat Trick.

An equestrian friend of mine suggested this series: it was one of her favorites. However, her suggestion was somewhat tentative. She had previously passed Eragon and Eye of the World along to me, which are so derivative and poorly-written that they just felt like babelfish translations of Tolkien. However, she had also forced me to read the Potter books (I was recalcitrant due to their popularity) and Pullman's Dark Materials, which weren't bad.

Now, I am as disappointed in modern Feminism as your average gender-queer culture-jamming existentialist transhuman chaos magician, so I am slow to suggest that the gender of an author should inform us about their ability to write. However, I will concede that in this culture, the way you are gendered will have long-lasting effects.

Apparently, as a man, you end up entirely unable to write sex in a fantasy novel; maybe sex full stop. Tolkien just kept his romantic leads a few thousand miles apart the whole story. Goodkind creeped us the fuck out with lots of fetishized stabbing. Jordan made spanking a part of his world's justice system. Gor.

Of course, there are female authors guilty of making their books into lewd, plotless sex romps, like Anne Rice and Laurell Hamilton, but at least the sex is still mostly about the characters; and sex should be. It should be an event in the character's life that causes some emotional reaction, and reveals something about the character's personality. Reading most popular male authors, you get about the same emotional depth as a child smacking two naked barbies together. There were times, particularly later in their careers, when both Rice and Hamilton managed to make sex almost as impersonal as their male colleagues, and I'd suggest in Rice's case that her (less and less) latent Christian repression did a passable job standing in for male sexual discomfort.

The sex in Lackey's work is of another breed. It feels human. It feels pleasant. It doesn't make you feel frightened that you might be a bad person if you're turned on by it. In short, it blew my fucking mind. I mean sure, there are male authors like Gaiman, Moore, or Mieville who can write a complex, personal, natural sexual interaction, but they are all authors of allusive, thickly-textured works that draw from literary tradition. What makes Lackey remarkable to me is that she writes a fairly standard, fun piece of pop fantasy and somehow, the sex isn't terrible.

But it's not just the sex. It's all pretty naturalistic and refreshing. Except for the magic--and the psychic horses. The world building is not grade A, but it isn't chicken feet. The magic is pretty new age touchy-feely, but so is the world, so it mostly works. In fact, the only thing that tips off the esscapist fantasy is the psychic equine love-bond. However, I'm not going to look into that too closely: I don't want to find that Lackey's sexual repression was staring me in the face all along.

Comics have been going through a very public struggle with maturity for some time now. They were well on their way to catching up with other art formsComics have been going through a very public struggle with maturity for some time now. They were well on their way to catching up with other art forms until they were hit with the 'Comics Code' in the fifties. The code was an outgrowth of reactionary postwar witch-hunting a la McCarthyism, and succeeded in bowdlerizing and stultifying an entire medium for thirty years.

For example, all crime had to be portrayed as sordid, and no criminals could be sympathetic. There goes any comic book retellings of Robin Hood. Good always had to triumph over evil and seduction could never be shown or suggested. In trying to write around these and other rules, it's not surprising that code era books got a little weird in their search for original plots. 'Superman's Pal' Jimmy Olson was forced to marry a gorilla no fewer than three separate occasions.

When they finally did shake off the yoke, following trailblazers like Steve Gerber and Alan Moore, authors were a bit over-enthusiastic, full as they were of pent-up stories and themes. What followed is colloquially known as the 'Dark Age', where all heroes were bad dudes, everyone had guns, and Wolverine guest-starred in twelve comics a month.

The release of all that pent-up violence and sexuality hit the industry like a ton of bricks, and soon, anyone who was anyone was penning stories of decapitation and prostitution, until someone titled a comic Youngblood Bloodshot Deathmate Red: This Blood's For You! and everyone decided it was time to go home. The authors seemed to assume that the inclusion of mature themes made for mature stories, when in reality, they were about as mature as a high schooler's marginalia.

And this struggle is still going on, to one degree or another. At the low end, Liefeld is still out there writing the same action plots, and somewhat better is Ennis, whose Preacher is a love letter to swearing, gross-outs, and bromance. Transmet (for brevity) also has its share of sex, violence, and puerile humor, but for Ellis, this is more than just an exploitation romp, it's a means to an end.

Though underground comics were rife with subversion and political satire, mainstream comics have shown up rather late to the party. Moore's comics are often political, especially his early works, Watchmen and V for Vendetta, but these were rather serious takes, coming from the school of post-modern realism.

In Transmet, Ellis is coming at the issue from a later vantage, that of subversive culture-jamming, most evident in his nods to Hunter S. Thompson's 'Gonzo Journalism'. In the sixties, writers of varying stripes adopted this style in rejection of the repressive fifties, but it took longer to spread to comics.

We can see the same form in action in Transmet, in Ellis' protagonist, Spider Jerusalem, a post-cyberpunk stand-in for Thompson. Most of the time, Spider is following a spiral of madcap self-destruction, doing ridiculous, violent, amoral, childish things in order to break people out of their daily ruts. The first step of this kind of subversion is always to break through assumptions, refusing to play within the system because house rules favor the house.

There is a good deal of humor and adventure in these romps, and their childish unsophistication is part of their charm, and their power. He's an unpredictable, moving target, and though all his actions are focused on specific goals, he makes sure that he is dangerous and entertaining enough to make his mark.

This is where the second step comes in. Once you have grabbed their attention and torn down their expectations, your audience is primed to listen to you with fresh ears. This is the whole point of bombast, wit, and humor. Comedians and Court Jesters are funny because it command attention and allows them to approach issues obliquely, sidestepping the usual thought-terminating cliches.

When Ellis gets these moments, he doesn't put them to waste. As a writer, he is capable of a biting vibrancy that few other authors can match, in comics or sci fi. He hits some of the high points of his impressive career in this book, but then, perhaps that's not so surprising.

This book is relying on two very powerful writing traditions: Gonzo and Cyberpunk, which both use similar methods of witty, idiomatic information overload to communicate their message. What saves this book from the cartoonish violence of a book like Preacher is what always saves cyberpunk: the pure strength of writing.

Both styles share an obsession with synthesis: creating a complex mix of disparate social elements and theories without growing too focused on any particular element. That is why the baroque high-water mark of revolutionary psychadelic writing shares the same location as the birthplace of cyberpunk: Philip K. Dick and Illuminatus!

Gibson really blew everything else out of the water with Neuromancer, and the attempt to pick up the pieces is called 'post-cyberpunk'. It's a collectio of disparate writings sharing a theme and a setting, but widely disagreeing on most everything else. Gibson's book was so prescient (and still is), that everyone else is trying to prove themselves the next technological and social prophet.

There have been a lot of people jumping on the bandwagon, but Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash stands out as one of the most interesting, complex, and purely enjoyable of the lot. Consequently, I spent a lot of time trying (and failing) to find another book that could match it, but with little luck. Not even Stephenson's been able to live up to it.

But there is a lot in Transmet that meets that desire for another Snow Crash, and maybe that shouldn't be so surprising, since Snow Crash was originally scripted to be a comic. It's almost as full of ideas, it's as unpredictable and enjoyable, and the writing has that precise mixture of intellectual and pulp action.

That being said, sci fi is not Ellis' strong suit. This is a soft sci fi if there ever was one, and Ellis' society doesn't hold up to the originality and perverse plausibility of Stephenson's. Ellis gives us sentient nanoclouds next to still frame cameras activated by button. It's not as bad as Star Trek, where you can disintegrate and remotely reintegrate people but can't fix a broken back, but it's not a hard sci fi built around the changes technology brings.

Ellis is more concerned with his characters and his politics, but luckily, he tends to hit his mark with them. Spider, like most of Ellis' protagonists, is a black-hearted, cynical bastard who lives by his own code and leaves a swathe of destruction behind, but as usual, he still manages to make him sympathetic. At his best, Ellis manages to remember that Spider's flaws are flaws, though sometimes, and particularly as he wraps the story up, Spider gets to be too much 'crotchety hero' and too little 'amoral force of nature'.

But it's a good comic, and more than that, it's a good piece of sci fi, though more on the 'Speculative Fiction' end, since it's more concerned with exploring the question of 'what makes us human?' rather than 'what makes travel above c possible?' It's sad and unfair that it never got an Eisner; it surely deserved it.

In fact, it's a crime that this great sci fi series ended in 2002, and that same year, the Nebula and Clarke awards went to a rewrite of 'Flowers for Algernon' whose sci fi elements were superfluous to the story. But then, it's usually too much to hope that a book will both be well written and get accolades.

Robertson's art is also solid, though I'm hard-pressed to think of any interior artist who could match Darrow's covers, but Robertson does admirably. His vision of the future is amusingly detailed and unusual enough to transport us away, and his sense of pacing is strong.

It's worth noting that it took the world twenty years to catch up with Neuromancer, with the premiere of the first Matrix, and that this series predates that landmark social event by several years. As we move closer to The Singularity, and technologies are developed more and more quickly, predicting the future will become more and more difficult. Already, sci fi is shifting to predicting next year instead of next century.

But Transmet looks further than that, because like all great thinkers, Ellis recognizes that to look forward, we must look back. His update of the dystopia to revolutionary politics post WWII is inspired, especially as it is twisted with Gonzo Journalism and Post-Cyberpunk. The best ideas are never one idea, and though Spider's politics sometimes grow to dominate the series, Ellis still contrasts them with a multitude of concepts, leaving us with a pleasing depth of insight.

I can only hope that more comic authors will realize that sex and violence--even at their most over-the-top--can be vital, complex parts of a story, but only if they have a point. There is no story element too outrageous for the arsenal of a talented, driven author.

As usual, it's a joy to see Ellis' madcap style, as he plugs the dangling cords from the cyberpunk machine into the rusty dystopian engine until the whole thing lights up like a 500-channel cold-fission laser-guided Christmas tree. You could do worse.

I know of no author in all of the English language who is like Peake, or who could aspire to be like him. His voice is as unique as that of Milton, BiI know of no author in all of the English language who is like Peake, or who could aspire to be like him. His voice is as unique as that of Milton, Bierce, Conrad, Blake, Donne, or Eliot, and as fully-realized. I am a hard and critical man, cynical and not easily moved, but there are passages in the Gormenghast series which so shocked me by the force of their beauty that I snap the book shut, overwhelmed with wonderment, and take a moment to catch my breath.

I would drop my head. My eyes would search the air; as if I could find, there, the conclusion I was seeking. My brow would crease--in something like despondency or desperation--and then, of its own accord, a smile would break across my face, and I would shake my head, slowly, and laugh, and sigh. And laugh.

Peake's writing is not easy fare. I often needed room to breathe and time for contemplation, but he is not inaccessible, nor arduous. He does not, like Joyce or Eliot, require the reader to know the history of western literature in order to understand him. His story is deceptively simple; it is the world in which he sets it that can be so overwhelming.

Peake writes with a painter's eye, which is natural enough, as he is more famous as an illustrator than a writer (the only self-portrait in the National Portrait Gallery). He paints each scene, each moment, in such careful, loving, playful detail that it can only be described by the original definition of 'sublime': a vista which is so grand and beautiful that it dwarfs our humanity, evoking a wonder akin to fear.

But Peake's writing is not so entirely alienating; on the contrary: he is vividly concerned with life. Gormenghast is the story of a life starting at birth, though our hero only got as far as the cusp of manhood before Peake was seized by malady and death. Each character is brightly and grotesquely alive. The 'fantasy' of this book is not, like so many epics, magic signifying moral conflict. The magic of Peake's world is the absurdly perfect figures that people it.

They are stylized and symbolic, but like Gogol, Peake is working off of his own system of symbology instead of relying on the staid, familiar archetypes of literature. Unusual as they may be, there is a recognizable verisimilitude in the madness imbued in each. Their obsessions, quirks, and unpredictability feel all too human. They are frail, mad, and surprising.

Like the wild characters of his sketches, Peake writes in exaggerated strokes, but somehow, that makes them more recognizable, realistic, and memorable than the unadorned reality of post-modernists. Since truth is stranger than fiction, only off-kilter, unhinged worlds will seem real--as Peake's does. This focus on fantastical characters instead of fantastical powers has been wryly dubbed 'Mannerpunk' or a 'Fantasy of Manners'. It is a much more enveloping and convincing type of fantasy, since it engages the mind directly with visceral artistic techniques instead of relying on a threadbare language of symbolic power. Peake does not want to explain the world, but paint it.

Tolkien can certainly be impressive, in his way, but after reading Peake, it is difficult to call him fantastical. His archetypal characters, age-old moral conflict, and epic plot all seem so hidebound against the wild bulwark of Peake's imagination. The world of Gormenghast is magical and dreamlike, without even needing to resort to the parlor tricks of spells, wizards, and monsters.

Peake's people are more fantastical than dragons because their beings are instilled with a shifting and scintillating transience. Most dragons, fearsome as they may be on the outside, are inwardly little more than plot movers. Their fearful might is drawn from a recognizable tradition, and I question how fantastical something can really be when its form and behavior are so familiar to us.

Likewise Peake's world, though made up of things recognizable, is twisted, enchanted, and made uncanny without ever needing to stretch our disbelief. We have all experienced wonder, confusion, and revelation at the world, so why do authors think that making it less real will make it more wonderful? What is truly fantastical is to find magic in our own world, and in our own lives.

But then, it is not an easy thing to do. Authors write in forms, cliches, archetypes, and moral arguments because it gives them something to work with; a place to start, and a way to measure their progress, lest they lose themselves. To write unfettered is vastly more difficult, and requires either great boldness, or great naivete.

Peake is ever bold. You will never catch him flat-footed; his pen is ever moving. He drives on in sallies and skirmishes, teasing, prodding, suggesting, and always, in the end, he is a quantum presence, evading our cumbersome attempts to catch him in any one place. Each sentence bears a thought, a purpose, a consciousness. The only thing keeping the book moving is the restless joy of Peake's wit, his love and passion for his book, its places, characters, and story.

He also has a love for writing, and for the word, which is clear on every page. A dabbler in poetry, his careful sense of meter is masterful, as precise as Bierce. And unlike most fantasists, Peake's poetry is often the best part of his books, instead of the least palatable. Even absent his amusing characterization and palpable world, his pure language is a thing to behold.

In the introduction, Quentin Crisp tells us about the nature of the iconoclast: that being different is not a matter of avoiding and rejecting what others do--that is merely contrariness, not creativity. To be original means finding an inspiration that is your own and following it through to the bitter end.

Peake does that, here, maintaining a depth, pace, and quality that is almost unbelievable. He makes the book his own, and each time he succeeds in lulling us into familiarity, we can be sure that it is a playful ruse, and soon he will shake free again.

Alas, not all readers will be able to keep up with him. Those desiring repetition, comfort, and predictability will instead receive shock, betrayal, and confusion. However, for those who love words, who seek beauty, who relish the unexpected, and who find the most stirring sensation to be the evocation of wonder, I have no finer book to suggest. No other fantasist is more fantastical--or more fundamentally human.

I really enjoy Scott McCloud. He is insightful and funny and his analytic method is always useful in dissection of concept. I find that the conscientiI really enjoy Scott McCloud. He is insightful and funny and his analytic method is always useful in dissection of concept. I find that the conscientious author tends to be the superior author, and for this reason, McCLoud is indispensable.

Another thing that is refreshing about McCloud is that he takes the medium very seriously, and reminds us, as creators, that we have a responsibility to the art to do everything we can with it, and not simply accept the given standards.

In a lot of ways, this book feels like an update of Understanding Comics, but with a greater mindfulness of the creator, and less for the pure history and development of the art. 'Making Comics' is an inspirational work which avoids treading the ground of other 'how to's, instead focusing on asking 'how might you'?

This is my favorite installment of the quintessential modern bildungsroman. Nevertheless, it has its problems, familiar to any reader of Rowling's.

SheThis is my favorite installment of the quintessential modern bildungsroman. Nevertheless, it has its problems, familiar to any reader of Rowling's.

She never seems to gain control of her writing, which spirals out into thousand-page doorstops filled with unimportant side characters and rambling plots. The story is moved along by arbitrary plot devices, often magic. Instead of using the magic to make her world seem more strange and wondrous, she uses it to cover up plot holes. Why write a consistent plot when you can just put in a spell or two to fix the problems?

Likewise her world is poorly defined. She did not start by constructing the 'wizarding world' and then base her stories off of it, rather she changes her setting to fit whatever she needs at the moment. This constantly shifting setting means the world doesn't make much sense if you take the time to sit and think about it.

Her fractured plots are not the result of 'realism', which some authors use to create a sense of a 'real world', separate from archetypes. Rowling is just trying to fit in all the disparate ideas and characters she has in her notepad. She becomes so attached to her characters and ideas that she is unwilling to sacrifice them for a more streamlined book.

She has problems connecting the many dots of her story, but uses her magical 'plot devices' to keep us from noticing that the scaffolding behind the facade is rather bare (indeed: crumbly). Her rabid plot movement points away from the cracks in her storytelling: "move along, nothing to see here".

I find it somewhat ironic that Rowling wants to 'graduate' from Potter to writing adult mysteries. A mystery needs to have a tight plot, based not in the characters but in the events surrounding them. Though many people tried to 'figure out' the Potter books and predict them, in truth there is nothing to figure out.

Rowling's foreshadowing is vague and unsupported, and there are just as many clues as red herrings. The only reason some of the elements seem predictable is because there was a crack team of several million people making every guess under the sun.

Combine that with the fact that the final book introduces completely new elements to finish the plot, and we can see that Rowling is not really in charge of her own pen. She is a slave to her own sentimentality. Then again, so are millions around the world.

The only thing which makes these meandering plots move along at a reasonable pace are her characters. They connect us to the magical world, so that even if it doesn't make sense, at least we can see how it might work for the people who live in it.

Her characters are vivid, emotional, motivated, and archetypal without being banal. They may not be psychologically deep, but for a monomyth like this, that is hardly the point. Most people aren't that complex, either.

In the series, this book gets the prize for the most psychological depth and also the most consistent mood. Before this, Rowling was still trying to get her footing, figuring out what exactly she was writing, and trying to explain the world to her readers.

She finally hit her stride in 'Prisoner of Azkaban', and got much of her unsure world-building out of the way in 'Goblet of Fire'. This is before she started feeling the pressure to wrap things up in a neat package, which again begins to take its toll on her consistency. This is the first, and really the last of her books where Rowling is able to write without being overly concerned with either the beginning or ending of her series.

Instead of placing a scattered plot over her characters, Rowling was instead able to let the characters travel through their own path of growth and self-exploration. The change is the most apparent in Harry himself, and though his transformation is somewhat sudden, it is still honest and believable for the character.

By focusing chiefly on her strength--character building--and escaping the constraints of the monomyth, if only for a moment, Rowling is able to avoid her weakest points as a writer and turn out her strongest book.